Sanctuary of Asclepius, Butrint
About
Epirotes founded this healing sanctuary to Asclepius at the foot of the acropolis around 300 BCE, and worshippers left more than 300 votive offerings in a hidden chamber behind its rear wall. Roman colonists later rebuilt the small temple, enlarging it to the west and north and roofing it in brick-faced concrete tied into the theatre above. The cult kept drawing pilgrims well past 117 CE, its festivals filling the theatre next door.
What happened here
A healing sanctuary where the treatment is a night's sleep. Patients purify themselves, sacrifice, and then lie down in a long open hall to wait for a dream in which the god appears and either heals them or prescribes. In the morning the priests interpret. The prescriptions are practical as often as not — diet, exercise, cold baths, a walk — and there are doctors on site alongside the priests, with no sense that the two are in competition. Cured patients pay for a plaque recording what was wrong and what was done, and the walls fill with them; a model of the healed limb or organ is the cheaper option. Snakes and dogs live in the precinct and are part of the treatment.
In ancient writing
- Virgil, Aeneid 3.294-505
Describes Aeneas's visit to Buthrotum (Butrint), ruled by the Trojan exiles Helenus and Andromache as a miniature replica of Troy. Describes the city, not the sanctuary of Asclepius.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →